


Can't make any promises now

by apolloxbvcky



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, BOM Keith, Canon Compliant, Confessions, Hurt/Comfort, Kosmo - Freeform, M/M, Pining Keith (Voltron), Post-Canon, Sort of? - Freeform, Title from a Taylor Swift Song, because i'm in love with him, farmer lance, i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28654914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apolloxbvcky/pseuds/apolloxbvcky
Summary: Keith and Lance have a long overdue conversation as they reminiscence on their lives
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 47





	Can't make any promises now

**Author's Note:**

> i started writing this fanfic at 2am last night right after i finished watching vld for the first time and couldn't stop crying.  
> it's my first klance fic and i'm a little insecure about it but oh well
> 
> hope you like it! <3

Keith jumps off the Black Lion with Kosmo on his right. He takes a deep breath, taking in Earth’s air. 

He never thought he could miss something such as air, but he had been gone for so long, he had learned to admire things most people took for granted. And it helped that the air here was so pure, unlike the dry air in the desert he used to live in. 

The man looks down at his companion, and smiles as he kneels in front of him. “You can run around while I’m inside.” he tells him, petting him between his pointy ears. “But don’t eat any chickens. I don’t want Mrs McClain to banish me from the farm, understood?” Kosmo tilts his head to the right, making Keith chuckle. “Good boy.” he says, standing up. The wolf runs away as soon as his hand is off his head. 

He walks to the door of the white house in front of him, climbing up the set of three stairs to stand at the porch. He sighs before he shakes his head and knocks on the wooden door. 

Mrs McClain opens the door, and she looks first surprised, then confused, at the boy in front of her. “Keith.” she says, and it comes out as a question. Keith wonders if it’s because of her surprise to see him here, or because she’s not sure what his name is. They had only had two conversations before this one, after all. 

“Good afternoon, Mrs McClain.” he greets her, smiling softly. “I… I came to see how Lance is doing.” 

Mrs McClain smiles, and she steps to the side to let him enter the house. “Of course, please, come in.” 

Keith steps inside. He had never been at Lance’s family’s farm before. The hall has only a table beside the door, where he sees a bunch of different sets of keys that he guesses belong to different members of the family. On top of the table there’s a round mirror, and he, as discreetly as he can, checks his hair. Helmet hair is definitely not the look he wants to meet Lance’s family with. But he looks okay, so the tension on his shoulders relax a tiny bit. 

There are a lot of family pictures, too. Like, a lot. Keith doesn’t think he has seen so many pictures in one place before. He can point out Lance on a few of them, but with the rest of the people, he’s helpless. 

He turns to look at Mrs McClain. “I brought my pet wolf with me.” He says. She widens her eyes. “He’s inoffensive! But I left him outside, he’s too big to be here anyway.” He can feel the blush creep up his cheeks, and he wants to punch himself for fucking up so soon. 

“That’s okay.” Mrs McClain finally says. “I’m going to tell Lance you’re here. Do you mind waiting in the living room?” She says, nodding to the room behind him.

“No, of course not. Thank you, Mrs McClain.” The woman nods, as she heads towards the stairs. Keith sighs and turns back, walking through the door Lance’s mom pointed out before. 

He notices Lance’s relatives too late, when they have already spotted him and he can’t turn back. He recognizes Veronica, and Lance’s dad. For the rest of them, he’s clueless. 

“Keith.” Veronica says, standing up from her place on the sofa. It’s so weird for Keith to see her like this, wearing bunny pyjamas, her hair up in a small bun and not wearing any makeup. She had flip-flops on. Flip-flops. Veronica shakes his hand before she asks: “What are you doing here?” 

Keith clears his throat, looking at all the expectant members of Lance’s family. “I wanted to see Lance. He hasn’t been answering our calls, or texts, or anything. I- we were worried.” 

Veronica smiles at him, and it gives Keith the impression that she knows something that he doesn’t, but he lets it go.

“It’s nice of you to care about Lancy like that.” One of Lance’s brothers says. He’s the oldest, he thinks, even if he doesn’t remember his name, and he has one of the toddlers, the boy, sitting on his lap. 

“Are you a paladin?” the little girl asks, suddenly right beside Keith, pulling down on his jeans and looking up at him. Veronica answers before he can. 

“ _ Is he _ ? Nadia, he pilots the Black Lion! He’s their leader!” she smiles. The girl, Nadia, apparently, looks back at him with sparkling eyes, as she lets out a very long ‘ooooh’. 

Then, she starts talking very fast and very loud: “WHENIGROWUPIWANTTOBEJUSTLIKEYOUANDTIOLANCEANDIWILLGRADUATEATTHEGARRISONANDPILOTONEOFTHELIONSANDDEFEATTHEBADGUYSANDHAVEPARADESANDHAVEMYOWNTVSHOWAND-”

“Nadia.” a voice from behind the man’s body pronounces. “That’s alright. Let Tío Lance’s friend breathe.” Mrs McClain says as she enters the living room. “He’s upstairs, in his bedroom. It’s the only one with the door closed.” she tells Keith, who nods and thanks her. 

He awkwardly waves goodbye at the family gathered around the table before he turns back and leaves the room. Before he steps on the stairs, he can hear Veronica saying: “Go get him, tiger.” 

He climbs the stairs one by one, looking to his right the whole time, to the wall decorated with even more family photos. Seriously, how many photos does this family have? 

He stops in the middle of the stairs when he spots himself in one of the photos. He looks closer, only to realize it’s a shot of all of the paladins, the one Mrs McClain insisted they took when they first came back to Earth. Hunk and Pidge are on Shiro’s right, smiling shyly at the camera. Shiro, instead, looks like he’s posing for one of the Garrison’s official photos. Lance was smiling widely, his eyes shining under the Sun’s light. And Keith…

Well, Keith was looking at Lance. And how could he not, when he looked so happy to be back on Earth? With all the people he loved: his family, his friends. Allura. 

The black haired shakes his head and climbs the few stairs left until he reaches the second floor. He walks to the only closed door, just like Mrs McClain had told him, and knocks twice on the door. 

“Come in.” Lance says. Keith opens the door slightly, only enough to peek his head in. His bags fall in front of his left eye as he does. 

Lance is lying in bed, wearing grey sweats and a hoodie, and mismatched socks. He has his hands in the back of his head, supporting its weight, and he’s looking up to the ceiling. He doesn’t look when Keith peeks his head through the door, or when he walks inside, closing the door softly behind him. 

“Hey.” he finally says. Lance raises a hand and waves at him. Keith doesn’t say anything else. He stays standing right where he is, hands shoved in his pockets and left feet on top of the right, pressing down on it.

He had never been good with words, much less when the conversation was about… feelings. That was Shiro’s thing, the words. But he wasn’t Shiro, and Lance needed a friend. 

“If you’re here to offer me your pity… I don’t want it, Kogane.” Lance says after a while. 

“I’m not here to offer you my pity.” Keith says. “I’m here because I’m your friend.” 

Lance finally looks at him. Keith had expected him to be crying, or to have red-rimmed eyes at least, but they weren’t even puffy. Still, there was a lot of sadness in them. They weren’t shining anymore, not like the Lance in the photo he had seen just minutes earlier.

The younger sighs as he gestures for Keith to join him in the bed, scooting towards the wall so they can fit. Keith doubts they can, but the sentiment is what counts, he guesses; so he takes off his jacket and boots, staying in just his black jeans and short sleeved t-shirt, and lays beside his friend. 

He mimics Lance, and looks up at the ceiling. Right above them there’s a skylight. It’s still daylight, but it’s late enough that the sun is making way to the moon and the stars. Keith thinks he can recognize a constellation already formed. 

He looks to his right, where Lance still looks up to the sky. The Altean marks on his cheeks are still there, and Keith can’t stop wondering what that means for Lance. Is he, like, an honorary Altean now? Is he  _ part  _ Altean? Or are the marks just a gift from Allura, to remind him of her love? 

“I thought you were going to leave with BOM.” Lance says, catching Keith by surprise. 

“Uh, yeah. Krolia and Kolivan thought I could take a vacation before that after everything that has happened recently… But I’m leaving next week.”

Lance smiles softly, letting Keith catch a glimpse of his teeth. 

“You really should stop calling your mom by her first name.” he whispers. Keith smiles, shrugging and looking back up. 

“I don’t know. It’s just easier.” 

Lance snorts. “Classic Keith…” 

He doesn’t say anything else, and neither does Keith. He feels his friend scoot a little closer, though, and then they’re pressed together shoulder to ankle, and Keith can feel Lance’s warmth everywhere they’re touching. It’s almost overwhelming. 

He can feel his warmth, he can smell his cologne, that one Keith always hated because it reminded him of all the machos on the Garrison, but that had with time just become Lance’s signature smell. He can hear his heart thumping near him, and the way he breathes, his chest going up and down slowly. 

He’s not sure he had ever been so aware of Lance’s existence before this moment. 

“You know I always wanted to be an astronaut?” Lance says. Keith looks up to his face again. He keeps staring up at the skylight, one hand under his head and the other on his stomach. “I dreamed about going to space, being surrounded by stars and maybe exploring new planets, or even galaxies. But for a little boy from Varadero, it was too big a dream. Especially knowing that my family was big, and I was the last one to come. My parents didn’t have the money to send me to university to study physics or maths, or anything like that. Not that I wanted to. And I wasn’t any good at school so I didn’t get any scholarships ever. I didn’t understand why I had to be smart to go to space. I just wanted to be there.” He finally looks away from the skylight, only to look past Keith, to the wall on the other side of the room. There, a few posters are hung on. One of them is a Star Wars poster, from the original trilogy. There’s also one from the Garrison, and a promotional one they all got from their TV show. “And then Luis and Lisa got married and they moved together, so the money issue was less tight. Still, I didn’t want to go to university. I was only 13 or 14 back then, but I already knew.” he sighs, then smiles at Keith. “And then they hired Vero at the Garrison; and she told us I could go with her, and I could be trained to be a pilot, and maybe someday… go to space. So I packed up and went there with her without thinking twice. I was so excited, Keith.” 

“I remember your first day.” Keith says. “You were a ball of energy, just so excited. Jumping all around. It made me want to punch you.” Lance chuckles. 

“I know. And I thought you were so stupid, always looking people from above your shoulder, and rolling your eyes at all the teachers. And when you punched Griffin?” he whistles. “The whole school was talking about that for days.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t one of my brightest days.” he answers, crossing his arms on his chest.

“You were an angry kid. I was a naïve kid.” he shrugs. “But we got to go to space.” he whispers.

Keith nods, side-eyeing Lance’s desk, on the feet of his bed, where he can see the blue bayard (Allura’s bayard) resting. 

“Do you regret it?” Keith whispers. Lance doesn’t look at him. 

“No.” Keith lets go of the breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding. “I’d never regret it. I’d have never met her if we hadn’t gone. I’d have never met her, or any of the friends we’ve made along the way. I’d never become friends with you, Pidge, Hunk and Shiro. I’d have never met Coran or Romelle. Pidge would have never found Matt and Mr Holt. Hunk would have never met Shay. You would have never found your mother.” he sighs. “I just wished it had ended differently. I just… I wish she was still here.” He’s touching the marks on his cheek, now, and Keith feels like he’s intruding somehow.

Keith sighs, turning so he’s on his side, facing Lance, who is again looking up to the skylight. “I know it’s different. But we all miss her. We all always will. What I mean is… you aren’t alone on this, Lance. You don’t have to be. We’re here for you, all of us. I’m here for you.” 

Lance doesn’t answer, but one of his hands moves and grabs Keith’s. He squeezes the older boy’s gloved hand, and he squeezes back. 

“All the people I’ve had crushes on have gone away at some point of my life.” Lance confesses. “Some of them even more than once.” 

“Really?” Keith asks. 

Lance nods. “Okay, what I’m about to tell you can’t leave these walls ever. You have to promise me.” he turns to look at him. “Pinky promise.” he says, raising their hands together and extending his pinky. 

“Okay.” Keith agrees, connecting his finger with Lance’s. Lance puts their hands back down, still holding each other’s fingers. 

“So, my first crush.” he groans. “Was Shiro.” Keith’s eyes widen.

“Takashi Shirogane was your first crush? No way.” 

“No way? Excuse me, have you seen Shiro? He’s a beautiful herculean man with piercing black eyes and the strongest jaw I’ve seen in my life. He was also out and, most importantly, the best pilot on the Garrison.”

“He was also in a committed relationship with another man. And way out of your league. And like ten years older than you, Lance!” 

“You only say that because he’s your brother so you can’t appreciate how sexy he actually is.” Lance says, rolling his eyes. “Anyway, so, yeah. He was my first crush, but then… you know what happened. The Kerberos mission.” Keith nods. “So yeah, I didn’t really know him personally, not as much as you anyway. But… it took a toll on me, okay? He was kind of my hero.” 

“Lance, you don’t have to explain yourself to me.” Keith whispers. Lance smiles at him.

“And then he came back, and all the Voltron shitshow happened and we became closer, and even though I was way over my crush by then, I loved him. Like a friend, I don’t want to fuck your brother, Keith.” The older boy snorts as Lance keeps talking. “And then… he…”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. You don’t have to… say it.” 

Lance shakes his head. “So yeah. He… went away. Twice. Kind of.” 

“Who else?” 

“Oh, well. A girl from the Garrison. She was a few years older than us, so she graduated. I never saw her again after she did. Her name was April? June? Uh, I think it was a month. She was brunette, taller than the other girls in her class. Oh, and she had blue eyes.”

“Are you talking about Julie Lovell?” Keith asks. Lance turns to look at him.

“Yeah! That was her name. God, she was gorgeous. Wasn’t she friends with Shiro?” he asks. 

Keith nods. “Yeah. She moved back to Canada. I don’t know what happened to her after that. Maybe Shiro knows. I can ask him. Maybe she’ll go on a date with you now that your head reaches past her elbow.” he smiles. 

Lance raises his eyebrows, looking unamused. “You know what? You’re not funny. So don’t try to be.”

“Okay. Sorry. So who’s next on your list?”

Lance looks back to the skylight. “Well. He was gorgeous. So fucking gorgeous, Keith, you have no idea. All black hair and dark eyes, and his skin looked like porcelain. And he was so… I don’t know, so cool? He was definitely cool. I was intimidated by how cool he was, to be honest. He was the kind of guy you can only expect to break your heart.” he sighs. “But he left. Suddenly, one day, he just left. No last words, no goodbyes. He packed and disappeared.” Lance bites the inside of his cheek before he continues talking. “But I found him one day, and a series of coincidences ended up on us becoming friends. For a long time, we were together all day, every day. Until he left again. He said goodbye this time, though. And I knew it was for the greater good, not because he wanted to, and that he would come back to me eventually, so it was okay.” he looks at Keith, who keeps listening to his words with his lips parted, frowning. “And when he came back, I was so happy… I had missed him so much.” he shakes his head. “But… life gets in the way, and we never got together. And then Allura came, so… Yeah.” 

“Did you love him?” Keith asks. Lance frowns, looking at him.

“What?”

“Did you love him as much as you loved Allura?” Keith asks, sitting up, looking down at his friend. Lance moves so that he’s supporting his weight on his forearms. 

“I… maybe? I don’t know, I’ve never thought about it like that.” 

Keith shakes his head. “Then you should tell him. Look for him, and tell him. Lance, you deserve to be happy. If he can make you happy, then… I know that you’re still mourning Allura, and you probably need your time before you can be with someone else, but if he’s going to make you happy, and if he’s as awesome as you think he is… Tell him. You deserve it. You deserve him.” 

Lance looks at him, frowning, for a few seconds, before he sighs and lets his head fall back. “You seriously can’t be this stupid.” 

Keith frowns. “What?” 

“Keith. I don’t know your middle name. Kogane.” Lance says, kneeling in front of Keith, pressing his hands on his shoulders. “It’s you, man. You’re the guy.” 

Keith’s frown deepens, and he shakes his head. “Me?” 

“Yeah, Keith. It’s you. Since the Garrison, through all the space adventures, to today.”

“But Allura…” Lance sighs.

“Listen. I loved Allura. I love her. I will always love Allura. But that didn’t mean I ever forgot about you. I was always thinking about the what if’s, if I had had the balls to tell you before Allura came into our lives. If you had liked me back. I- I loved her, I was happy that she loved me back and I was happy with our relationship, but-”   
  


“It’s Yurak.” Keith interrupts him.

“What?”

“My middle name. Well, not legally, but it’s the Galra name my mother wanted to name me, so I use it as my middle name now.” 

Lance giggles, and Keith’s heart flips on his chest. “You’re so cute, man.” 

The older boy smiles. “Thanks?” 

Lance sighs, hugging his friend. Keith hugs him back, hiding his face on his neck. 

“Me too, by the way.” he says. “Everything you said. Me too.” There’s a tiny silence, and then Keith says: “Sorry, I’m not good with words.”

“I know. It’s okay.” 

They break apart after a few seconds, and Lance looks at his eyes, biting down on his lip and raising his hand to caress Keith’s cheek. “But I can’t do this. Not right now. Everything about Allura still is…”

Keith raises his hand, too, and grabs at Lance’s wrist. “I know. It’s okay, and I understand. I’m leaving with BOM next week. I’ll be away for at least two months. When I come back…”

Lance nods. “Okay. I’m willing to wait for you, if you’ll wait for me.” 

Keith smiles, and he lets a little laugh escape his throat. “Lance, I’ve been waiting for you my whole life. I can do a few months more.” 

Lance smiles back at him, and embraces the older boy again, kissing his cheek. Keith presses his arms around Lance’s waist and presses his body against the other boy’s. “Will you stay here for the night?” Lance whispers. Keith nods.

This time, it’s Lance who presses his face against Keith’s neck, and as he feels his breath down his spine, and runs his hand up and down the tanned boy’s back, he looks up at the skylight, looking at the already dark sky, and smiles. 

**Author's Note:**

> friendly reminder comments and kudos make me happy so please leave some!
> 
> also, if you like my job and would want to support me, you can [buy me a coffee](https://ko-fi.com/marvelousmers)
> 
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